Tens of thousands of books have been banned or restricted in U.S. prisons, according to a report by PEN America, a free speech organization that has been tracking book bans in the country.
On Wednesday, the organization released \u201cReading Between the Bars: An In-Depth Look at Prison Censorship,\u201d which examines how prisons choose which books to take away from prisoners, with some titles getting thrown into the garbage by staffers.
\u201cThe extent of prison book banning is alarming and an attack on the written word itself,\u201d said Moira Marquis, senior manager of PEN America\u2019s Freewrite Project and lead author of the report. \u201cCensorship should not be a knee jerk tactic by authorities to address other prison concerns, such as spurious claims that books are a conduit for drugs. Yet we are witnessing vast amounts of time, effort and money expended in order to stop people from reading. This censorship must end.\u201d
The group based its report on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for all the prison systems in the country, as well as interviews with prison staff. The organization says its analysis is likely an underestimation due to the poor tracking of the information by states.
Florida was the top in prison book banning among the 28 states that track the information, banning 22,825 titles. Texas came in second at 10,265, and Kansas third at 7,699, based on the latest information available from 2021.
PEN America found books are most commonly censored in prisons due to sexual content, but that this leads to \u201cpopular magazines, drawing books, medical books and dictionaries\u201d getting banned.
The most banned book was \u201cPrison Ramen: Recipes and Stories from Behind Bars\u201d by Clifton Collins Jr. and Gustavo \u201cGoose\u201d Alvarez, a collaboration between an actor and former inmate that examines different ways to cook ramen noodles. A self-help book by Robert Greene called \u201c48 Laws of Power\u201d is the second most banned.
\u201cIt\u2019s a form of control. It\u2019s the ultimate form of power of manipulation. So the hypocrisy of saying, \u2018this is a book that\u2019s dangerous for you\u2026\u2019 whereas they\u2019re the ones that are completely controlling the dynamic and giving you access to only certain amounts of information is very frightening. That\u2019s how totalitarian systems operate,\u201d said Greene, whose books are banned in 19 state prison systems.
PEN America also found prison systems are increasingly banning books from nonprofits or independent bookstores and only allowing state-approved vendors.
The few approved vendors are a way for state prison systems to restrict titles in a \u201ccontent-neutral\u201d way, according to the organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n